


"You're Just Like Your Father"

by Deuterosis



Category: World Trigger (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Not What It Looks Like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23505940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deuterosis/pseuds/Deuterosis
Summary: Kido wishes to see Yuma, alone.
Relationships: Kido Masamune & Kuga Yuugo, Kido Masamune & Kuga Yuuma
Comments: 9
Kudos: 34





	"You're Just Like Your Father"

As expected, his son stepped in and immediately his eyebrow raised. A conference room full of no one but the High Commander of Border and his own miniature self hadn't been an expected occurrence.

"You asked to see me, right?"

Kido pushed back from the fortress of a desk. The sun was streaming in behind him, but too high off the ground in this room, they weren't exposed. Kuga Yuma might have told his squadmates and nearby friends he'd been summoned, and that would be all.

"Come over here and stand in front of me."

The boy must have wondered, but soon he obeyed. He walked the distance across the floor to the edge of and around the desk to stand before Kido without hesitation. His eyes stayed fixed on Kido's, his aspect not quite that of a child, but his gravity not quite yet mature.

Thinking carefully over what he had planned to do, finally the man lifted an arm, beginning to reach forward, to stretch across the short gap. Yuma didn't stop him, nor retreat, only looking up at his palm. Patiently waiting, observing the hand, to see exactly what the hand would do.

Kido made contact. Warm, and soft, the boy's hair, as fluffy as it looked. But denser than it looked, closer to stalactites than falls of water. Silken wire.

Clearly the boy liked being petted; he relaxed into the touch, rather than pulling away or becoming stiff, suspicious below it. He let the motion of Kido's hand gently tilt his head slightly back.

His white locks covered most of his face, and this made it hard to examine him. To look for all the resemblances to someone Kido used to know. With his eyes closed, with his face so young, they were only more subtle.

Inertia brought Kido's hand continually down, keeping the child's head poised for scrutiny; his gaze was tracing the duckling-curve of Kuga Yuma's mouth at the moment the boy finally became curious and opened his red eyes.

Kido released him immediately, caught in this act of careful evaluation, and the boy took one step back. His stare was far too shrewd, too knowing of the world, though the conclusion he must be drawing about Kido was wrong. He hadn't been contemplating anything untoward, nor fighting an urge to trace the half-size pad of lower lip with his thumb.

"You know," Kuga Yuma said anyway, "if you want to put your hands all over me, you can."

This was not what Kido had expected and he recoiled from the words. "Don't be disgusting. I'm not attracted to you."

Undeterred, the little thing brazenly planted his two hands on Kido's knees - power latent in his little hands - pupils familiarly black, looking through the glass of eyes to see into the honest soul: "You make up the stupidest lies."

Still he pushed the boy away. Unwelcome thoughts invaded his brain: what had happened to him, Kuga's son, that he seemed almost willing, _eager_ for such things? Kido did not allow himself to think it had happened under Yugo's guard. It must have been after the man died, that terrible things became of his boy.

But then, that had been the job of the Trion Soldier accompanying the Kugas, to prevent this particular loss of innocence.

Had this Soldier still been present to question, then Kido would have demanded answers.

Yet still undeterred, Kuga Yuma continued, "You don't have to feel bad about it, if it's just me. I'm stuck looking this way." He thought on something for a moment while Kido was still judging how to respond, and added "And I don't know if I'll be here for it when I'm twenty."

 _Not here?_ The certainty in Yuma's statement didn't change Kido's expression, for nothing much could - yet it gave the man's body a sudden small nervous trill, a painfully familiar bubble of air in the vein. The echo of abject loss.

"Why wouldn't you be here?"

"Well," he answered casually, as if confessing to some minor offense like defacing the building with a can of paint: "I'm sort of on a time limit."

Like his father, Yuma wasn't one to beat about bushes. He simply told Kido of Yugo's final moments, explained the ring on his miniature left index finger, explained how exactly it was he could have white hair when his father's had been jet-black.

It wasn't difficult to guess that the Black Trigger in question had been his father. And the reason, too, was fairly obvious once known. Fatally wounded, Yuma's true body was sealed within that ring as anyone's flesh body is hidden within an activated Trigger, here as a means of putting off its death.

And Yuma concluded this story by restating even though he was stuck as a prepubescent physically, or more to the point because of that fact of being stuck, he didn't see why this should be an obstacle, even before he technically reached the age of majority. It wasn't ordinary circumstances at work here. He wasn't a typical boy.

"Before I go, I wanted to know what it's like."

"Then find out with someone else."

He wondered if he might regret suggesting that. Then doubted it; if this boy insisted on pursuing such things, at least no one could coerce him into more than he desired.

If that was comforting.

"You may go," Kido growled, dismissing the wayward child by turning his entire person away.

"Sorry." A few seconds after the man didn't answer, he left and the door finally slid closed behind him.

Almost as if to confirm it, Kido turned back to see him gone, and rested his elbows on the desk. He tried now to push the whole conversation out of his head.

If he was genuinely "attracted" to the boy, it was to the familiarity, the portions undiluted by an unknown Neighbor woman. He had wanted to hold the boy, but as you hold a small, gentle animal: to warm yourself as much as it. What he wanted was Kuga Yugo's flesh and blood seated comfortably on his lap, relaxed and lying on his shoulder, possibly nuzzling his shoulder. Nestled in Kido's embrace in perfect serenity. Neither disheartened nor sad, like his father never given to crying, but saying wistfully, as if on the verge of sleep, "I miss him." So that Kido, with a piece of his soul escaping, could sigh, "I miss him too."

Just a brief moment in time to pretend he could possibly have been this boy's mother.

Kuga the senior had a way about him, like this. His presence transcended all earthly things. It didn't matter whether you were male or female. If you were married, if you pined for a kidnapped wife, whom you still loved even as you found your heart dropping for this man too. He had a presence of reassuring safety - as if, your hand in his, he could lead you through a volley of bullets, crumbling buildings, and take you both through without a scratch on either one.

If you were his wife, his family, his friend, you would know you were loved. His love like a lump of searing melting slag, that warmed your chest even as it burned you to fathom such intensity of heat; as this heat became an unbearable star when he departed; as this dead star's weight could not be borne even in remembrance, to know he was nothing more now than memories and a ring on the finger of his son.

His _dying_ son, the ultimate slap to the face: that even the child he gave his life for was so soonly transient.

Yet Kido did not blame the boy. Could not blame the boy; how could he even be angry? How could he despise a child so loved by his father? If Yugo thought him worth this sacrifice, then Kido could only agree.

Even just laying eyes on him for the first time had stirred something in Kido. Infinitestimally tiny, like the new embryo in a chicken's egg; pricking, like the tip of a needle you hadn't expected to strike your hand.

Aching like a point of poison under the skin, memories. Wishes.

You can try to destroy your very heart, but something will always remain. Even if it is destroyed by another, something will remain.

Rather than inwardly recoiling from it, to his surprise, Kido received it as a taste of a loved food after years in the absence of flavor. A droplet of water when, like a monk, he had ascetically gone without hydration for years.

Even if it might complicate his future plans to take this drink, instantly he'd wanted to throw off the yoke of a closed-off heart. Wanted to _feel_ again, loudly and richly, though had long forgotten how. Like a phantom limb, only the ghosts of sensations sometimes, the real thing lost for good.

If it were possible, though, to restore the real thing, he thought it might be through Kuga. Through what remained of him.

Even believing this, his obstacle was _how_.

**Author's Note:**

> I just removed some slashes I use to denote thought and replaced them in one paragraph. How embarrassing!
> 
> While I'm here, I should say I didn't and don't have any ideas on how to continue this further. Like, none. Partly also since we know very little about Kido, and this is a series with a high chance of Jossing, and I want to avoid writing stories for World Trigger that aren't "future-proof", if you know what I mean. I'm only saying this because I realized I had left the impression that there might be more. Sorry about that!
> 
> * * *
> 
> ...Now that I think about it, though, does _Yuma_ know about his time limit?


End file.
